This post is all about photo contributions on Google Maps, and more specifically, about the views these photos rack up. It consists of a series of leaderboards showcasing the view counts of Local Guides at different Local Guide levels. There’s a leaderboard for each level and in this way you don’t have to be a “top gun” Level 10 Local Guide with a mega million views to participate! So, whether you’re an entry level Local Guide or from a small country, town or village, or a top level Local Guide from London, New York, Paris or New Delhi, you can join in and it’s simple to do! If you want to know more then see this How-to post by @AZ_2021. However, if you’re keen to jump on board, then use this link to register.
Why are photo views important?
We all know that as Local Guides we don’t get points for the views that our photos generate, however, views are important as they give us a pretty good indication on how we are impacting on our communities at the Local Guide level. Our photo views give us a good indication on how many people we have helped make a decision such as about a place to visit or a meal to have. So while we don’t get points for views, we certainly get an awesome feeling when we see that our photos are being viewed by many people and being visible across Google services, like Search means that our photo view counts can increase significantly and you will see here on the leaderboards how significant they can get.
Is this just a competition?
While there is an inherent competitive element within them, these leaderboards are more than just seeing who has the best photos or the most photo views, far from it! They have been specifically designed to motivate us, help us to monitor our contributions and performance, and show us how to improve and make better contributions so that we achieve better results, and all in a fun and enjoyable way! If this can be done then the objective of these leaderboards will have been achieved, mission will be accomplished! So if you haven’t as yet, join in and enjoy!
How to Read the Photo Views leaderboards (August 2023)
Briefly, this is what you need to know about the leaderboards in this post. For more details see the leaderboard documentation:
The leaderboards in this post present details about the photo views of hundreds of participating Local Guides from all over the world. As well as an overall leaderboard ranking the top 100 Local Guides by photo views, you will see leaderboards for different Local Guide levels which provide you with direct comparisons of your photo views achievements with that of your peers.
There’s also a leaderboard, referred to as the Exclusive Billion Photo Views Club that highlights those heavy hitting, high views Local Guide achievers.
Finally, there’s a leaderboard that shows the top 100 Local Guides ranked by the Average Views/Photo which gives a good indication of the overall “quality” of all photos taken by each Local Guide. This is simply calculated by dividing the Local Guide’s total photo views value by the number of publicly visible contributed photos. Of course the use of the term “quality” here refers to the attractiveness of the photos to the Google AI and the viewing public.
Where shown, around leaderboard sequence numbers indicate that this is the first time that the Local Guide has participated on the Top 100 Photo Views leaderboards.
Where shown, ( ) around leaderboard sequence numbers indicate that this Local Guide levelled up/down onto this leaderboard.
An asterisk (*) shown after a Connect Username indicates that that Local Guide is a Connect Moderator.
Double asterisks (**) shown after a Connect Username indicates that that Local Guide is a Googler.
A ? or the words “Not set” in a cell indicates that the respective value hasn’t been provided by or cannot be determined for the respective Local Guide.
Selecting any of the Connect Usernames will take you to that Local Guide’s Connect Profile.
If you’re a participating Local Guide you must check their the leaderboards for any errors or omissions and if you find any, then please add the details in a comment on this post. Regarding omissions, please note point 5 above.
Firstly, a big welcome to all the new Local Guides participating on the photo views leaderboards, and yes, there were quite a few this month. We all hope that you will enjoy the fun and friendly competitive side of these leaderboards while at the same time learning how to improve the quality of your contributions and the reach and impact that they have on your community. Please do read the readme section as quite often your questions will be answered there.
Secondly, there’s just soooo much happening here when it comes to photo views that in many instances just beggars belief. I can’t wait to see this month’s Movers & Shakers leaderboards. Stay tuned!!
Finally, please do check the leaderboards for any errors and omissions. Collectively, the now 5 different streams, with so many new participating Local Guides this month, it’s a big update and as we are only human, both you and I do make mistakes. Enjoy!!
Thanks for sharing Photo Views Leaderboard (August 2023). It is full of data yet with clarity of presentation. One can easily make out the inference he/she wishes to. Great job you are doing @AdamGT .
BTW, I have moved up to 51 this month from 53 [ Level 9 Photo Views Leaderboard (July 2023) ].
As usual, my eyes get stuck on some data point where I may wish to highlight to the forum. May be this could be my ignorance of the facts but still I would like to highlight here for the benefit of a larger audience here.
When I was going through Level 9 Photo Views Leaderboard (August 2023), I found in some cases (randomly I clicked the user name), there is anomalies in their Level. In their connect’s profile level is shown as Level 10 whereas in their Google map profile level is shown as Level 9.
P.S.: For confidentiality sake I am not sharing the relevant snapshot of their profiles on Connect and Google Map with different level mentioned.
I could not find the calculation example of this metric (Average Views Photo) in the Leaderboard documentation as it is available for STAR photo Average Views.
Can I assume the calculation of Average Views Photo as below:
Example:
Total Number of Photos as on 31-July-2023 = 10000
Photo Views as on 31-July-2023 = 40000000
So, Average Views Photo = 40000000/10000 = 4000
OR, some other method of calculation is used? Appreciate your words of wisdom.
@AdamGT Look at all of these newbies raising the bar on getting into the Top 100! This is an awesome month.
Ms. @SamanthaSheehy seems to have dropped a couple commas from her counts this month , but that still didn’t open the door for me to get anywhere close to the list. We’ve got a LOT of heavy hitters around here!
Thanks again @AdamGT for all the hard work you put into this. I have to agree with @JustJake about the links to the previous leaderboards. Makes it so much easier to compare and see how much we’ve improved.
Thank you for your appreciation @Kumaarsantosh . Indeed the leaderboards are full of data. Yes there can be a difference between the levels shown on Maps and here on Connect and this can be due to for example, the fact that the different Google servers involved have not synced the data. My understanding on this is that it is only when you log into Connect that your Local Guide level on here is updated to what it is on Maps but the problem is sometimes Local Guides do not log out of Connect! Logging in and out forces a synchronization. I do hope that this explains the issue that you raise and by the way, this is precisely why the leaderboards are based on the levels shown on Maps.
Indeed @Kumaarsantosh , the Average Views / Photo metric is the total views divided by the number of photos. The Average Views / Day for star photos is little more complicated to calculate.